WE’RE JUST two cold, gray months into the year, but 2011 is already showing sunny promise. Here are six signs that better days are on the horizon.

The Grainery

Center City will get a new brewpub as early as next month, at 1113 Walnut St. OK, the owners (the same folks behind East Falls’ candlelit Fork & Barrel) say it’s not really a brewpub because just four of its 26 taps will feature beer brewed on the premises.

SUPER BOWL Sunday is upon us, and the testosterone of championship-hungry football fans rages nowhere stronger than in the kitchen.

Armies of chefs, fortified with tongue-searing hot peppers, are trash-talking the competition, certain that this year – this year, I tell you! – they have an unbeatable game plan. They boast, they strut and they rant over the proper ingredients: beans or no beans, ground beef or sirloin, habanero or jalapeño . . . or perhaps they’ll break out the hottest ...

Late last year, a 33-year-old Internet developer named Tim Patton went before the Fishtown Neighbors Association with a proposal for a small brewery in his home on Richmond Street near Marlborough. The company would produce about four kegs a week – so small that it wouldn’t qualify as a microbrewery; instead, it would be classified as a “nanobrewery.”

Patton presented plans that showed the entire operation could fit in a small room in the back of ...

IT WASN’T ALL that long ago that if you wanted to sound semi-intelligent on the wonkish topic of hops, all you had to do was remember a few key varieties.

Hallertauer is the perfect match for the soft water of Bavaria’s lagers. Cascades gives a grapefruit flavor to West Coast ales. And EKG is not a stress test – it stands for Britain’s East Kent Goldings.

Alas, in the past 10 years, dozens of new hop varieties have cropped up, and it’s ...

IN THE ENTIRE history of mankind, there has been only one invention that fundamentally improved life for the beer drinker: the twist-off bottle cap.

OK, two, if you count flushable toilets.

And now there are three, thanks to the Bottoms Up Draft Beer Dispenser. It does exactly what it says: It fills beer cups through the bottom of the cup. A beer vendor simply places a plastic cup on the dispenser, and – without pulling a tap handle or even pressing a ...

WHEN IN Scotland, don’t ask what’s in the haggis, don’t ask what’s underneath the kilts and, for god’s sake, don’t ask for a Scotch ale.

You’re going to get a strange look from the bartender and then . . . who knows? He might pour you anything from Belhaven 60 Shilling, which at 3 percent alcohol is light-bodied and amber, to Dark Island, which at 10 percent alcohol will have you thinking barleywine.